


Real

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/M, Post-Sburb/Sgrub
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-11
Updated: 2012-03-26
Packaged: 2017-11-01 19:18:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The snow continues to fall, covering their footsteps and filling the tracks they’ve made by rolling down hills and indulging Jade’s incredibly silly (But stupidly cute, though he'd never dare say it) insistence that they make snow angels pretty much everywhere. Dave can’t remember the last time he laughed so hard.<br/>For the first time in a long time, he’s pretty sure things are going to turn out okay. </i>
</p><p>Learning to live the normal life they won together is harder than first expected. Post-Sburb angst and something-ever-afters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. LoFaF, Past.

His red shoes scuff the fresh snow, the patch they left in it being covered almost instantly by the new flakes that seemed to fall constantly in this place. She watches as he raises an eyebrow behind the oversized glasses and digs his hands into his pockets as if he really couldn’t care less. The picture of indifference: This was Dave Strider. _The_ Dave Strider, right in front of her. Not on a screen, not in an audio file. In the flesh, touchable. _Real._

_  
_

_“_ They said I should probably help.” His voice is deeper than she thought it would be in person and it croaks a little as he speaks, making her stomach do a somersault for reasons she doesn’t understand. She watches the movements of his mouth as he talks, determined to make her own mental copy so that she could recreate it if she never saw one again, but as he shifts his focus from his aforementioned Chuck Taylors, a second flash of red steals her attention from behind those ridiculous glasses. He watches her for a moment, peering over the frames before finally shrugging. “Time loops and stuff.” He explains as if he’s telling her something as trivial as that they’re out of milk. “Figured I could speed this shit up.”

Jade Harley, the _real_ Jade Harley, is lost for words because she still can’t believe he’s here. She still can’t believe for the first time in what feels like forever another human being is standing before her.

 

“Earth to Harley? You just gonna gawp like that forever, you’re making me self-conscious. Please don’t tell me you’ve been a mute this whole- ”

He’s interrupted and squawks as she hits him with more force than he’d thought possible, sending him crashing backwards into the snow on his back - and suddenly hands, hands everywhere. He opens his mouth to protest but her fingers get there first, tracing his jawline and prodding at his lower lip like a preschool kid who just discovered play-doh. “Harley?” He croaks, blinking rapidly behind the glasses, but she’s totally gone,  grinning down at him, laughing like an idiot before throwing her arms around his neck and snuggling into his chest and shit this was not part of the plan, what the hell is happening here and fucking hell you better not start blushing Strider that’s not a cool thing to do – that’s not a thing that’s going to be happening at all, no way.

 

Finally ( after what seems like waaay too long for his liking), she sits back up and begins to stroke and pull gently at his hair and he’s _seriously_ confused but he’s terrified if he opens his mouth again he will squeak and end up looking like a total idiot. It makes him wince a couple of times but eventually she seems to calm down a little and it’s strangely therapeutic, at least therapeutic enough to get his heart-rate back to normal.

 

 “People…”  She whispers, knocking him off guard again with the softness in her voice. “I’m sorry Dave!” She laughs. “It’s just been a really long time since I’ve seen _anyone!_ And here you are!!! You’re right here! I can touch you! _”_

Her laugh echoes in his ears and does weird things to his insides that he’s not sure he’s entirely okay with, but it’s a nice sound. It’s a pretty sound, he could get used to that sound.

 

_Your name is Dave Strider and you are the hugest idiot to ever set foot on planet earth. Here you were freaking out because you thought you’d been stranded in fucking Lapland with a mute lunatic woman when all your childhood friend Jade Harley wanted was a bit of human contact, and who the hell were you to deny her when she was here, flesh and bone and sitting (straddling but whatever, minor details) on top of you._

 

He leans on his elbows and lifts himself, opening his arms and allowing a half-smile to grace his lips. Jade needs no spoken invitation for a bear hug, squeaking and laughing a little too loudly right in his ear but he doesn’t mind - not really, because behind the shades he’s just as much of a kid as she is and he’s been waiting to meet her just as long as she’s been waiting to meet him.

 

The snow continues to fall, covering their footsteps and filling the tracks they’ve made by rolling down hills and indulging Jade’s incredibly silly (But stupidly cute, though he'd never dare say it) insistence that they make snow angels pretty much everywhere. Dave can’t remember the last time he laughed so hard.

For the first time in a long time, he’s pretty sure things are going to turn out okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this is the first time I've written anything like this ever so if I'm doing something wrong someone wave the flag and I will stop, I just really like post-sburb stuff and I can't find much stuff I like with all the kids so I gave it a shot.


	2. Earth, Present.

She glanced with distain at the sight: It was one she was familiar with but it never failed to simultaneously make her stomach churn and make her thankful for the fact that they never got around to changing her last name. Rose loved her brother, but that didn’t mean she had to be proud of him, or condone his actions. Not that he’d have cared if she had expressed her concerns: He was beautiful and he had the world at his feet. Well, a small proportion of the female world. As yet another group of girls from the year below their own passed him, flicking their brunette hair in a vain attempt to catch his attention only to be shunned in favour of the senior with legs that went on for days that he had pressed up against his locker, no doubt whispering pure filth into her ears whilst she laughed too loudly and stroked his cheek, Rose began to lose her patience with the world and wondered if someone somewhere was monitoring the rise of sales in hair-dye in the area, because Dave Strider had a thing for dark haired girls and by now everyone knew it.

“Dave.”

She tried and failed to stifle a sigh as his low mumble continued into his latest toy’s ear. She knew he could hear her, she could tell from the way he’d turned his face further from her direction, hiding from her. Gritting her teeth, she repeated herself in a near growl.

“ _Dave._ We need to leave.”

His back stiffened visibly and she watched, ignoring the malevolent glare of his playmate, as he stood to his full height with a near mechanical movement, each vertebra in his spine shifting one by one until he was no longer stooped over the girl. At his tallest he was above average for his age, towering above almost everyone with long limbs that looked as if they would snap should he fall the long distance down to the floor from way up there. Adjusting his glasses, he blinked at the girl he’d been fixated with only seconds before (Whose expression in turn was becoming more bemused and insulted by the second) as if he couldn’t quite figure out what he was looking at, and finally he turned without a word and moved towards his sister who was already turning herself to walk in the general direction of anywhere other than this stupid corridor with all it’s stupid girls breathing toxic feminine smoke into her brother’s lungs and filling his head with bad ideas and a guilty conscience.

 

They walked side by side in silence, the crowds parting subtly to let them through. It was only when they were outside that she felt the gentle graze of his bony fingertips against her palm as he interlaced his own thin fingers with hers.  She couldn’t help the slight smirk that spread across her lips.

“Good dog, best friend.”

She felt his hand twitch against hers, the entire palm tensing suddenly, and without having to look up she knew she had made herself clear.

“Too far.”

The slight smirk became a full smirk, audible in her tone as the red mist descended. How dare he tell her what was and wasn’t ‘too far’ when he was pushing the boundaries every single day.

“Not far enough for you, is she?”

 

It came out in a hiss, and she wasn’t entirely sure if she meant it to. His hand jerks away from hers almost as instantly as she regrets it.

“Dave,”

She watches helplessly as he clenches his fist and turns his back to her, adjusting the satchel strap on his shoulder with his free hand before flipping her bird and loping off effortlessly in the opposite direction to home at a pace she’d have to jog to catch up with.

Rose Lalonde stared after the skinny figure of Dave Strider as his walk evolved first into a jog and then a full-blown run as fast as he could go away from her, his shadow stretching out far behind him in the evening light and managing somehow to look even more twig-like than he did – something she’d never thought possible.

“ _Coward_ ,” She hissed under her breath as his figure got gradually smaller and smaller until he could be seen no longer, but she didn’t mean it – not really, and she knew she couldn’t possibly mean it when her own voice was wavering that badly.

_“Too far.”_

_“Not far enough,”_

No, he’d been right. Too far.

 

\-----

 

He turned the key in the door only to find the door already unlocked and cursed under his breath, pushing his glasses down off the top of his head as he opened the door and peered gingerly inside. A rush of unease swept over him as the expected snarky comment never came: She wasn’t in her chair.

Their apartment was nice. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms. Kitchen/Dining room and a living area with ample room for four people. He tried not to think about it. The chair that sat in the middle of said living area was Lalonde’s; it made her feel powerful. Well, that’s what he was guessing anyway. 

It had become a routine. Dave went out, Rose sat in the chair, Dave came back, Rose was ready to attack. He didn’t get her deal at all. It was like she’d decided her life’s purpose was to antagonise him. Every day was either a therapy session or an abuse session.  He couldn’t decide what today had been. She’d kept out of his way for pretty much the whole day. They’d made their separate ways to school, and she always woke up early so he’d woken to an empty apartment and a lukewarm mug of coffee (Which was stupid because he didn’t even like coffee, but in terms of passive-aggressive gestures resistance was futile with Lalonde.) and proceeded to get to school late as usual. If he didn’t know better he’d have said she’d been avoiding him, but by now they both knew it was usually nothing personal. She’d actually only intervened when it was time to go home. He shuddered a little as he remembered why and begrudgingly thanked her mentally. Bad habits needed to be tamed. Maybe not just yet, he was having fun, but eventually he knew he’d have to stop.

 

All this, though, was irrelevant because she wasn’t in her fucking chair.

 

Slowly, he began to lose all the calm he’d been collecting in the six hours he’d been away from her.

“Lalonde?”

His throat was dry and he croaked a little as he spoke. “Lalonde? The fuck is this, where are you?”

He was pretty sure deafening was something silence was never supposed to be. Panicked, he began to flip the fuck out, pacing their space, looking under tables and other places he knew Rose Lalonde would never normally be in the back of his mind, but she was normally in her chair and this was different and strange and he didn’t like it one bit. After behaving like a raving lunatic for about 10 minutes, he turned to face the doors to their respective bedrooms.

 

Hers was shut but his was open just enough to see a warm light emanating from inside, and suddenly he couldn’t believe how much of an idiot he was.

 

Pushing the door open enough to sneak in, he allowed his eyes to adjust to the glow of the living room lamp that she must have carried (With some difficulty, that thing was heavy even for him.) to his room. Rose Lalonde lay on top of the covers on her side, her gold hair fanned out over the pillow artfully and eyes tightly closed. They flicked open almost as soon as he was inside and they stared at each other in silence for a few moments. Lilac and wild, they frightened him a little. They were strangely out of place among the rest of her delicate features. He’d often thought Rose’s body could have been made entirely out of porcelain and her hair of fine silk-threads from the way it always seemed to frame her face so perfectly, never a strand out of place, if not for those eyes.

 

“Where _were_ you?”

“Out.”

 

He was relieved the panic in his brain didn’t show from his words, because the tone of hers made it fairly clear that he was s in the shit now, for real. He waited in silence for the verdict or at least the half-hour lecture on the dangers of being an asshole, but neither ever came. Slowly, her features appeared to soften and then crumple as she extended a hand to him, beckoning him to come closer.

 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

 

It took him a minute to realise what she was actually talking about.

“I miss them too, Dave.”

Quietly, he moved closer to join her, curling up behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist without a word. Rose was warm. Rose was always warm, actually, and not half as much of a bitch as he gave her credit for. Burying his face in her hair, he mumbled his apologies to her too and closed his own eyes.

 

He stayed there until the sound of her breathing became long and shallow before lifting her gently and easily to her own room and her own bed, tucking her in and kissing her lightly on the forehead as a gesture of apology for making her worry and a gesture of gratitude for being the only thing he had left in this shitty world.

“I miss them more.” He mumbled to her sleeping form, dropping onto the couch she kept beside her bed and pushing his glasses up onto the top of his head.

 

He’d still be there when she woke up. It wasn't like he had anywhere else to go. 


	3. The Veil, Past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just going to start adding characters and other things to the tags as they appear because this is pretty darn frivolous right now.

“Hey!”

 

She jabs at his arm with one of her pointed fingernails, her distinctive cackle barely audible under her breath but just loud enough to piss him off. Granted it didn’t take much recently but she was still pushing him further than he needed to go.

 

“Dave! Dave hey!”

 “Fuck off.”

_“Dave.”_

 

Rose glances up from her knitting and throws him a warning glare but right now he couldn’t really care less. Fuck right now, any day he couldn’t care less about what Rose thought about him. Who the hell did she think she was, his mother? They were friends but her constant pestering was just another thing that was getting on his last nerve. With an loud, exaggerated sigh he gets up and stalks off, shoving his hands into his pockets with as much dignity as a guy in a red cape could hope to have (Which, needless to say, wasn’t much. He pretty much looked like a total tool but fuck that noise, he was making a statement).

 

Terezi Pyrope stares, dumbfounded, in his general direction and Rose frowns. She gets up begrudgingly and paces slowly to the other girl (She’s been told many times that blind for Pyrope isn’t the same as blind for a normal person, but she still feels weird making sudden movements around her, much to everyone else’s amusement.) and pats her lightly on the shoulder.

 

“Don’t take it personally. He’s just…” It’s her turn to sigh now, but this time it’s a genuine one. “He’s just tired I think. Tired and homesick.”

“Peoplesick.”

“What?”

 

Rose blinks in surprise. It’s the first time she’s heard the troll speak at a normal pitch and volume or not suffixed/prefixed by a stream of unnerving cackling. Terezi grins back at her, her huge unblinking red eyes shining behind her glasses. “He misses your friends. I can tell.” Her voice is calm, but Rose can hear the fondness in it. “I’m blind, Rose. Not stupid. I don’t have to see him to figure out he’d rather be someplace else right now.”

 

Rose is terribly embarrassed and flushes a deep shade of pink, nodding profusely and forgetting that Terezi can’t even see it. “You’re right, I apologise. I forgot how well you knew him.”

She’s answered by another stream of giggles. “Don’t be sorry. He’ll get over being a Grumpy-McButtface soon enough, no offence taken on either of your parts!”

 

The girls watch him. He’s sitting now, with his back to them. “I think he could use a friend, Rose. A human one.” Terezi offers gently. “And I think you could too.”

She considers it. The troll has a point; both of them were close to Jade and John, but banter was all that had ever been exchanged between themselves, save for a few moments where they thought they were going to die fairly recently. Taking a deep breath she nods again, straightening up and lowering her hood off her head. “Yes. Yes, you’re right. Thank you, Terezi.”

 

“Anytime.” She chuckles, the beginnings of a fond smile beginning to play on her lips. “I’m kind of experienced in the ways of the irritable boys who think they're too cool for feelings.” Rose can’t help but notice a slight teal flush to her cheeks but doesn’t question it. After all, they’ll be spending a lot of time together. Best to keep some things as a surprise.

 

“Alright.” She says to herself as Pyrope moves away. “Time for some family bonding…”


	4. Earth, Present.

“I don’t even like coffee.”

“You’re welcome, Strider.”

“Seriously Lalonde, what the fuck is it with you and coffee?”

“I love you, too, Strider.”

“This thing is huge, not even you could drink this. There’s not enough volume in space to hold this amount of coffee and space is expanding Rose so how the hell do you expect me to fit this in my stomach even if I was going to drink it.”

 

She sipped from her own mug of the same size, crossing one leg over the other. Opposite her at their table sat her brother, bed-haired and somehow still gorgeous even after a lack of sleep and with a humorously confused expression. God bless the Strider/Lalonde genes, and god bless their talent for being able to talk far more than necessary. 

 

“Which, for the record – just so you know, wouldn’t want to surprise you or anything seeing as this is only what we do _every single fucking morning,_ which is totally fine by me Lalonde, I’m chill with this coffee shit so you just work it out because I think this is totally _awesome_ – for the record, I’m _not_.”

Rose lifted her mug a little higher and fixed her eyes on him. He couldn’t quite figure out the emotion in them at first, but it soon became clear it was one of challenge. ‘ _Watch me.’_ Or, as he preferred to think of it, ‘ _I’m a huge douche who enjoyed these passive-aggressive games with my mother far too much and now I’m going to force you to play them too.’_ Fucking smartass bitch, he wasn’t falling for this.

 

“Lalonde, stop that.”

She narrowed her eyes and shook her head, mouth still firmly clamped onto the cup.

“Seriously girl, you’re going to explode. Is this a kink for you because I’m really not feeling it.”

 

He watched with a strange combination of awe and repulsion as she continued to drink at an impressive pace. He didn’t even _want_ to know where or when she’d learnt to hold her breath that long.

Eventually he saw her stop swallowing. Banging the mug down on the table triumphantly, she threw him the smirk of a champion so smug that it was almost enough to make him consider trying to better her, but not quite enough. It was going to take more than that to get him to even consider engaging in this stupid game. Dave Strider was the bigger person here, nothing was going to make him stoop to her juvenile level. 

 

“Pussy.” She whispered simply when his lack of game became apparent, still smirking to high heaven. He gritted his teeth and pushed his glasses down over his eyes, clamping his hands around the sides of his mug.

“Oh _hell_ no.”

 

Rose watched for the next few minutes, trying desperately to stifle her spluttering laughter behind her hands and failing miserably as Dave Strider struggled through half a cup of the bitterest black coffee known to man and had to surface for air after only seconds, with a pitiful gasp. His pathetic wheezy coughing was strangely endearing and by now tears were rolling down her cheeks and he was beginning to laugh too.

 

“Pussy.” He confirmed when he was able to talk, offering her the remainder of the liquid in the cup. She accepted, finishing it in a single gulp to add insult to injury. She was just glad to hear him laugh. These moments between them were rare and oh-so precious to her now. She savoured every one, and they in turn calmed her mind and helped to erase the chaos that had a tendency to brew inside.

The problem with being a person who never outwardly erupted was that it meant the inward reactions that would have caused such an emotional outburst were forced to brew over and over inside. Rose knew this well enough. She simply chose to ignore it, and usually it worked. Last night it hadn’t.

 

**_== > Rose: rewind to last night._ **

_Your name is Rose Lalonde and how could you possibly have been so cruel to your own brother? If not cruel, then how so ridiculously thoughtless? Damn it, Rose, get your shit together, and fast, before you wreck anything else in this unhappy situation._

_  
_

_You know the rules:_

_You don’t talk about Jade and John. Ever._

_If it wasn’t for the physical similarities, you could be lovers. No one says it but everyone is thinking it; you can see it in their eyes as they move from your path and watch your hands brush. You know they’re looking when you touch and play. You know what they think about you: the vermin sister of Dave Strider, so incapable of displaying emotion to other people that she's resorted to some kind of perverse incestuous infatuation with her own sibling._

_The worst part is you can see why. You can hardly blame them, because you’d probably have a field day analysing anyone else in a similar situation._

_  
_

_It’s not your fault you’re close. It’s not a choice, it’s a lifeline; the unspoken, inconvenient truth. That's what you tell yourself. As much as living together brings back memories you’d rather forget and hangs them from the rafters like used nooses for all to see and you to grimace over when they catch the tops of your heads as you walk beneath them, you know you couldn’t live apart. You need Dave, and Dave needs you. The two of you are more similar than you’d care to admit, and you’re both terrified of being left to the perils of your own thoughts for too long._

 

_In your case, it’s the horrorterrors._

_You can understand what it’s like to live with voices in your head, and that’s exactly what makes you so good at what you do. Your real benefit comes when you have to explain them, though; you know the thoughts are not your own and thank god for that because if you didn’t you’d probably go insane. Scrap that, you would go insane. You'd lose your mind in an instant if you, like a normal person, were forced to so much as consider those thoughts were your own sometimes. They follow you everywhere, invisible eyes glaring through your own pupils, taking in your surroundings and ripping them to shreds, morphing and twisting them into a differing, terrifying alternative to what is actually in front of you and making you question what’s real and what isn’t. Sometimes it's a scarily close call. Sometimes, you're wrong. You're glad it's not often, those times are usually messy._

_When Dave is there to tell you you’re being stupid, you’re fine. When he’s not, you lose your head._

 

_  
_

_‘He’s not coming back.’_

She stiffens, tapping her fingers on the side of her mug. Crossing and uncrossing her legs three times each way, she takes a deep breath and sips from the cup in her hands and tries to focus on its warmth.

 

‘ _Can you really blame him? You hit a nerve, Rose.’_

 

The voices aren't terrible tonight, but they're only just audible which rubs salt in the wound. If he was here, she’d probably not have noticed their raspy whispers at all. You shouldn’t be able to feel words, but somehow she can feel these ones: they poke at her eyes and prickle under her skin, daring her to react in some way she’ll probably regret. She curls her body closer into the chair, focusing on the closed door in front of her because he’ll be back soon, he always is. He has to be.

_‘Maybe this time you finally did it.’_

Her blood runs cold.

‘ _It’s always been a risk with that boy.’_

“Stop it.”

_‘You know it’s true, Rose. Two people could come through that door: Dave, or the guy telling you they found Dave’s waterlogged corpse-‘_

_“_ SHUT UP.”

The cup is slammed down on the side table and the drips from where the liquid sloshed over the edges in her haste will have to wait until morning. She jumps from the chair as their tendrils begin to manifest themselves as hallucinations, filtering her vision and making everything unbearably dark. Rose begins turning off all the lights, even the small ones, until the entire flat is in darkness and she can’t tell if she’s seeing their wisps or the shadows of her own furniture. It will do as a short term fix but she's learnt by now that they are malicious and full-scale hallucinations that can't be merged with reality aren't beneath them. Panting from the shock she takes the lamp from the living room table, a huge, spherical object, and somehow heaves it to his room, tossing it onto the bed and slamming the cable into the nearest plug socket.

It flickers a little as she turns it on but the glow is warm, not fluorescent, and that’s exactly what she needs, or at least close enough that she can pretend it’s what she needs.

She can curl up on the bed with it and wrap her arms around it. She can steal the warmth it emits and she can close her eyes without feeling afraid, watching the light dance behind her eyelids. “He’s coming home soon,” She can mutter to herself, “Because he wouldn’t leave me here alone.”

And she can wait there in the half-light until he returns. It’s not like she can do anything else.

 

 

**_== > Rose: snap out of it. _**

Or rather, Strider: Snap your fingers in front of Lalonde’s nose until you break her creepy witch-girl trance because it’s too similar for comfort to one you’ve seen before on someone else.

 

Rose jerked her head upwards to the sound and found herself looking into her brother’s concerned eyes, realising for the first time how _tired_ he was looking recently. The way his eyebrows furrowed when he frowned made the shadows beneath his eyes appear even darker. Life was taking its toll on the both of them.  She watched as his features softened into a relieved smile and made to leave the table. “Laughed so hard you spaced out and became a zombie. I know that feel, bro.”

He left her with an affectionate ruffling of the hair (to which she, of course, enthusiastically voiced her false objections to) and wandered off in the general direction of his bedroom to presumably begin his weekend-routine of doing fuck all until it was time for dinner. His lack of motivation to do absolutely anything of interest to himself or anyone else was concerning but she was learning that she had to accept that some things were going to take longer than others to change, and at least he was making jokes again. Baby steps, one foot in front of the other. It was going to take a while but they were going to be okay eventually. As long as they kept all traces of blue and green from this place, they would be fine.

 

That was the theory, anyway.

As she looked to the window where the sky was beginning to show signs of a pleasant day, a wave of nostaglia rolled over her heart for brighter times. Blue cloudless skies: the wrong hue, but the same feeling. It was supposed to be making him better and perhaps it was, but she couldn’t help but feel an empty space where before, despite all the drama, she’d felt their house was her home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh, I have far too many feelings about Rose.


	5. The Veil, Past.

He shakes Rose loose of his arm despite her best efforts to cling to it and hold him back. He can hear shouting but he’s can’t decipher the words – it’s like his head is underwater and he’s watching himself drown, totally unable to do anything other than let this shitty situation run its course. His mouth is moving and words are spilling out but he’s not in control of what words they are or in what order. Someone else has taken over, and he’s beginning to understand what it must have been like for his sister when she went Grimdark because this wasn’t what he wanted at all. He was trying to _help._

_  
_

His fist connects with Karkat’s jaw and he watches in horror of himself as he recoils, clutching his face.

_It’s not my fault._

He holds up his hands, unable to speak and Dave moves closer to punch again.

_This is your fault, not mine._

He lifts his hand, bringing it into line with his face again.

_And you’re going to regret it._

And suddenly, everything goes black.

 

\---

He wakes up from a dreamless sleep with his head in her lap, her ruby eyes staring down at him with a mixture of confusion and worry in her expression. “Rose hit you. Hard.” She explains, laughing nervously. “You kind of deserved it, coolkid…”

“Bullshit.” He mumbles, wincing as he shifts his weight to try to sit up. She doesn’t stop him, in fact her hands aren’t even touching him, they’re on the floor either side of her which is weird considering up until now she hardly spent a waking minute without her digits somewhere on your body. “He provoked me.”

“He didn’t do-“

“Bull. _Shit._ ”

“Dave.” She frowns. “ _He didn’t do anything_.” He doesn't want to be angry, but something in the way she narrows her eyes when she says it, like she's scolding him when all he did was for _her_  benefit, that manages to push him just a little too far for comfort. 

“He’s been skulking around for weeks now, glaring at you and giving you a hard time for hanging around with me, so if he thinks he’s going to start lecturing you on what you can and can’t do I’m perfectly entitled to punching his stupid face every time he tries.” His face is deadly serious. Perhaps she can’t see it, but she knows Dave by now. She can sense his move from the sound he makes when he moves, perfectly in sync with her mind’s eye. Even watching from a distance it’s clear to see that their chemistry is flawless. They reverberate off each other in a way that complements them each perfectly and in a way Dave has never experienced with anyone else in his entire life and never will. He’s dense, but he’s not an idiot. He knows what they have here is good, and he cares about her. He honest to god does, which is why he won’t admit that maybe, just maybe, he shouldn’t have broken Karkat’s nose.

 

He watches her face as her blank stare follows him. She’s hard to read when she doesn’t talk. Hell, she’s hard to read when she does. She talks a lot, but she never says much, and there’s a lot more to this girl than freaky murder-games and possessed cackling. Her hands ball themselves into fists and she rubs the knuckles on the cold floor – finally a clue. She’s not pissed, and he knows he should be relieved about that, but there’s something else that he can’t quite put his finger on that’s starting to unnerve him more. It takes him a while, but eventually he decodes it; she’s hurt. “He cares about me, Dave.” Her voice is quiet and serious and suddenly he wants to leave this room right now because this isn’t a thing they do, they don’t talk about feelings or serious stuff, that’s the unspoken rule. “It’s not a thing you can understand. It’s different for our race and yours.”

 

Dave Strider has never yelled at Terezi Pyrope so loud.

 

“How exactly is it different, TZ? Tell me, educate my insignificant human brain as to what the fuck is wrong with this picture seeing as I’m too stupid to figure it out myself. You know what I see when I look at you two? I see the most awesome girl I ever met being played around by a guy who’s too much of a tool to man the fuck up and admit that he loves her. Yes I said it – _LOVES_ , you’re not the only one who can throw shitty cultural concepts around, two can play at this game.”

 

Already he’s gone too far and he can tell from the way she’s shrinking back against the wall, her eyes beginning to defy her willpower and filling with a strange blue-teal tint at the corners but fuck it, he’s started now. Suddenly he’s four years old and being picked up from day-care early in his brother's car because some kid broke some other kid’s doll and he kicked him so hard he coughed up a little blood and that wasn’t meant to happen at all but he couldn’t control it and people are yelling and no one is listening but honestly he did the right thing, honest he didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.

_Not my fault. I was provoked._

“He’s ordering you around! He’s telling you not to spend as much time with me because it makes him feel insignificant when we both know if he wasn’t being so much of a jerk in the first place you wouldn’t be spending any time with me at all. I don’t _care_ if he cares about you, _I_ care about you too. Maybe not in the same way he does, but I care about you, and I know he cares about you too, I'm not _stupid_ , I can _see_ it - that's what is pissing me off here. He cares, but that is not how you treat someone you care about at all and if he thinks it is then yeah, he deserved every second of it and I'm not sorry.”

 

_I was provoked._

“Love is love, TZ. Doesn’t matter if it’s humans or aliens, platonic or romantic, hetro or homo.”

He swallows the lump that's been building in his throat. When did _his_ hands ball into fists?

“Your shitty matesprit or your brother.”

_Don’t you cry, little man. Don’t you dare cry._

“Love is love,”

_Because Striders don’t cry, Dave._

“And if you love someone, you don’t treat them like shit, you show them you can't live without them.”

_They get back up and give what they were cryin’ about a reason to cry._

“Before it’s too fucking late.”

_They fix things._

 

Her eyes are wide, jaw open with an expression that shows she clearly has no idea what just happened and he’s embarrassed as hell, the heat on his cheeks is rising and he knows if he stays there she’s going to be able to smell it.

He does what he’s already learning he does best – he runs away, bolting out of the door and almost knocking over Rose as he goes. He’s not sure how long she’s been outside but it looks like long enough to hear because her breathing has gone kind of shallow like it does when she has nightmares and if that wasn’t a nightmare situation he’s not sure what is. They stare at each other for a moment, neither sure what to do and neither more surprised than the other. It’s Rose that speaks first (because it’s _always_ Rose that speaks first, anyone else is lucky to get a word in edgeways now she’s getting to grips with this Seer business) and he braces himself for the verbal onslaught, but she just sort of shakes her head and gives him a look he’s never seen before.

 

“You shouldn’t have hit him.”

His hands begin to shake, still curled into balls.

“But I’m glad you did.”

He blinks in surprise, not sure if he heard that right or not. She smiles and he hates her because he can see that she pities him but she pulls him into an awkward embrace, rubbing his back like he’s a little kid again. He wants to push her away and tell her to fuck off but at the same time somehow he knows he needs this too.

“I’m proud of you for sticking up for something. Just try not to hit anyone next time.”

_Striders don’t cry, Dave._

He closes his eyes and leans into the hug, catching Rose off guard by pulling her closer to him. “I want to go home.”

“I know.” She murmurs, hushing him and stroking his blonde crop gently. “I know.”

 

_They fix things._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not my best effort but I have a lot of update feelings and limited time so I'm going to throw this at the screen anyway.


	6. Reunion, Past.

The first thing Rose Lalonde see’s when she meets Jade Harley face to face for the first time is her smile. The second is the fact that she’s grown into an incredibly beautiful young woman. The former article, the smile, is hard to miss: the distinctive buck-teeth make it difficult to ignore for obvious reasons, but somehow they manage blend into her face perfectly in a way that complements it rather than compromises it. However, that’s not why she notices it: Rose doubts she’s ever seen a smile so genuine, so radiating with real affection, even from her own mother. Jade Harley glows in a way she didn't even think was possible. She finds herself standing face to face with a girl she can’t quite believe is real, delicately reaching and brushing the cheek  of every fairytale heroine from her childhood and silently expressing a wish never to be woken if this is indeed, as it seems to be, too perfect to be true and she’s dreaming.

 

Comradeship between females is something Rose has always struggled with. Other girls were beneath her with their petty jealousies and spiteful comments. Jade was different; untainted by society, a blank slate framed with honesty and compassion of a level unattainable to anyone in the modern world who had ever experienced first or second hand encounters of the darker sides to human nature. To speak with Jade gave her the same thrill as writing or reading; she was able to access a place unknown to anyone else. A special secret and a friend in a world full of hostility. Despite her seeming indifference, the platonic love Rose felt for Jade was something she had never questioned for a moment, and to meet with her after so long evokes a strange mixture of feelings that result in Rose desperately clutching Jade to her chest and sobbing quietly into her shoulder, taking everyone by complete surprise.

 

Jade is caught off guard, but her expression remains gentle. She wraps her arms tightly around her friend and marvels inwardly at how small she is; perhaps it was just the motherly presence Rose had in online conversations, but she’d never thought for a moment that she would be the taller of the two. Their embrace doesn’t last long, though, because John Egbert has never been a subtle guy and female emotions are a totally foreign concept to him, let alone the emotions of the girl he never thought he'd see crying in a million years. Suddenly he’s right in the middle of it, asking way too many questions despite Jade’s efforts to push him away and just as suddenly Rose is in his arms instead and he’s silenced by the realisation that the last time they met, she was dead and he can’t help but cry a little bit too. Jade is laughing by now, allowing a couple of tears to fall down her own latte-brown cheeks at just how silly everyone is being: why is everyone crying, they’re all safe and finally together, so why is she crying too?

 

What utter emotional carnage. John and Rose by now are the most ridiculous mess, he thinks. Whilst everyone else is weeping like lunatics, Dave Strider’s laugh cuts through their noisy displays of affection like a really un-shitty sword and causes everyone turn and watch him double over and clutch his stomach with tears running down _his_ face for a totally different reason.

“Holy shit,” He looks up, removing his glasses and fixing them all with his blood-red eyes. He has to gasp for breath after laughing so hard. “Would you guys just look at yourselves for one fucking-“

 

The sentence is never finished, not that anyone really minds. His mouth hangs open, eyes wide.

It’s been a long time since Dave has seen Jade’s face (three years, to be exact, but who was counting?), but the first thing he notices is that the dip in her lower lip is still there from where her front teeth have always rested on it. The second is that her hair is much longer, but the way it seems to thin nearer the ends and curl in far too many directions to be humanly possible hasn’t changed. Before he knows it, he’s mentally ticking off an internally-saved checklist in his brain that he doesn’t _ever_ remember making of ways Jade Harley has not changed one single bit and simultaneously making a second list of ways that she has that he’s less proud of because it seems so far to contain only one major thing: she’s incredibly attractive, but not in a traditional way. Sure, she’s got a chest to be proud of and that crazy hot island-princess look she always had is still going strong, but he has a sinking feeling it’s not her aesthetic attributes that are making him think about her like that. It’s more to do with the way her head is tilted to one side in a way that makes the light curve around her bone structure and her hair cascade over her shoulder to one side, and even more to do with the subtle dimple in her left cheek as one corner of her mouth lifts slightly to smile in a knowing way that makes him worry that she can read his mind. He hopes she doesn't mind. He really hopes she can see that this is only a really small part of what he's feeling about her right now and doesn't mind waiting a minute for him to figure out what the other part is whilst he gawps like an idiot in her general direction.

 

Rose Lalonde can _definitely_ read his mind and is displaying her trademark smirk but right now that is totally irrelevant because his arms have outstretched of their own accord and Jade fits perfectly into the space they made, just like the first day they met. His chest touching hers, he can feel her erratic heartbeat through their clothes and he doesn’t care that she can probably feel his too. She’s warm and soft and she smells like home in a way that he always tried to pretend Rose did but never quite succeeded.

 

All at once bereavements  don’t matter and arguments don’t matter and aliens don’t matter and something in his heart tells him that he doesn’t have to pretend to be the big guy any more, he’s not alone and he doesn’t have to put on the brave face because they’re here now and it’s okay. Everything is okay. They made it. They’re safe.

Suddenly, he understands why everyone was crying.

Jade shushes him, chuckling quietly (even though she’s crying too - she’s not fooling anyone) and tangling her fingers in his messy blonde hair, all irregular edges where Rose was straight lines and accurate improvisation where she was too-carefully-planned precision. There is something comforting about the way their pieces don’t quite fit together because he’s learnt by now that anything that seems perfect is too good to be true. To hold Harley and know that she’s figuratively perpendicular to him, a polar opposite where everyone else he’s been close to has been a parallel line, is strangely reassuring. It’s not flawless, but it’s very real.

 

And real is exactly what he didn’t realise he’d been needing until he felt it. __

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taking the obligatory privilege of being as darn fluffy as I like right now in the knowledge that I am going to metaphorically pee on everything I love in terms of blissful relationship simplicity in probably around two chapters. Let me just slather the fluff-frosting all over this fic-biscuit on with a spatula and laugh as I forcefeed it to you. You're very welcome.


	7. ==> Rose: Dwell on the past

_Your name is Rose Lalonde and you are five years old and waiting for your mother to pick up up. All the other kids have either left or are leaving, and even as a child you can feel the shame burning on your cheeks from the way their parents cast you an apologetic, pitying look. Your mother is the most beautiful woman in the world. Your mother is a queen and you her princess. She showers you in gifts and everything you could ever want, and you are lucky to have her, so you don’t need their pity because your mother will be here real soon. She was probably busy getting you your latest un-birthday present or saving the world (because that’s what your mom does, you tell the other kids, and that’s why she’s always late._

_The chill in the air nips at your cheeks and you wish you’d worn a scarf, but your mom is a little busy right now and she can’t find the time just lately to go out and get you a scarf like hers. You shiver, but you don’t mind because your mom will be here really soon. She always is._

_  
_

_It is December 4 th, 2000, and two hours later you decide maybe it’s time you learnt to walk home by yourself. You just know your mom will be so proud._

_  
_

__

__

__

_ \---   
_

_  
_

_Your name is Rose Lalonde and your mother has such messy hair. Such messy, messy hair, but that’s okay because she’s been working late again. She’s so tired she had to sleep on the couch. There’s an empty bottle of her special medicine on the coffee table, maybe she needed more than usual today. You like her medicine bottles; they are always tall and elegant. You’d love to reach out and touch them but they’re always taken away – you’re not allowed to play with the medicine. You like them, though. They remind you of her._

_As you drag the brush through your mother’s hair, you worry about her. You do this a lot for such a little girl, but your mother worries about you too so you think that it’s good to worry about her. You wonder why she sleeps so much. You wonder why she needs so much medicine. Is she sick?_

_  
_

_You remember a few nights ago when your mother had too much medicine. She’d been home that night, it was nice. She was in a super giggly mood – your favourite mood, because when your mother laughed she was especially beautiful – and you’d curled up on the couch together to watch a movie. You didn’t know what the movie was about, but you didn’t mind because your mother has impeccable taste. You could see she’d taken a lot of medicine then too, and it made you a little sad to think that she was hurting that bad._

_The sound of retching and coughing had woken you to a cold couch and a couple of empty bottles. You remember how you found your mother, your beautiful princess mother, curled over the bowl of the toilet, colourful medicine vomit trickling from her mouth and tears on her perfect face. You remember the smell and the feel of her hair, silky under your small fingers, as you pulled it away from her face so that it wouldn’t get dirty. You remember the sound of her sobs as you patted her back and tried not to panic, but most of all you remember the snarl in her voice as you tried to prise the last bottle of medicine from her cold hands. Her eyes had been wild and her tone harsh and for the first time in your life you’d been a little afraid of your mother._

_  
_

_“Mommy **needs** this medicine, Rosie, you understand? I **need** it.”_

_  
_

_The words echo in your ears and you instinctively draw back from her sleeping frame before realising you’re being silly. She’s calm now, her breathing even and deep. You reach out and stroke her cheek with the side of your hand the way you saw on TV and you smile in the knowledge that she’s safe here, getting a probably well-earned rest. You cover her with one of your fleece-throws, hoping the Squiddles pattern will make her laugh and take the empty bottles away._

_  
_

_Your mother isn’t sick, you tell yourself as you tentatively sniff one of the bottles and try to forget the image of her looking so vulnerable. You can’t though, the two things smell the same._

_But that’s okay, because you love your mother, and your mother loves you, and if she’s sick then all this medicine is going to make her better really soon._

_  
_

_It is December 4 th, 2002, and your breakfast is a cup of coffee. There isn’t any milk, you guess she forgot to go shopping, but you drink it anyway. It’s hot and bitter but you guess it can’t be helped. It’s not so bad when it cools down a little._

_  
_

_\---_

_  
_

_Your name is Rose Lalonde and you are not coming home, you tell yourself as you switch off your phone and shove it into the pocket of your jeans. Your hair is long and tied into bunches where it’s been for the past three days. It’s getting greasy. Your pink trainers are scuffed on the toes and your shirt is getting a little dirty, but you decide you don’t care. You have bigger things to worry about._

_  
_

_Scaling the top of the climbing frame, you observe the world around you. It seems like you’re a lot higher up than you are. You pull your journal out of your backpack and scrawl that down in it in pencil. You don’t stop there, damn it. It’s always like this, one sentence and then you just can’t stop. You go through about four a year of these, filling them with thoughts and hopes and worries and sometimes stories and poems too. No one will ever see them apart from you, but you’re your own harshest critic so you decide that doesn’t really matter anyway. Sometimes you’d like to be praised but you’re too old for that now anyway. You don’t care about spaces on the refrigerator or achievement stickers at school. You are Rose Lalonde and you realised a long time ago that the first step to being happy was to live for yourself and no one else._

_  
_

_You stay here for a couple of hours. A few, anyway. It’s actually more like five. It’s pretty dark and you decide to check your phone. Waiting for the screen to light up as it turns on, you feel something like hate bubbling in your gut but you ignore it. It seems you have voicemail. Holding your breath, you put the phone to your ear and wait._

_  
_

_“Rose? Rosie? Darling where are you? Look, I messed up with the pony thing, I’m sorry. Please come home darling, I’m worried sick.”_

_  
_

_Her voice is slurred and sad and you have to remind yourself that it’s actually not your fault when you catch yourself feeling half-guilty. Your heart does a backflip and your eyes begin to water of their own accord, but you can’t shake that feeling from before. It burns in your throat and makes you grind your teeth. You know what it is, but you don’t want to think about it._

_You know by now what it’s like to feel let down by someone you care about, but that never seems to make the feeling any easier to deal with._

_Sliding down the frame, you reluctantly trudge the familiar path to home in the dark, thinking one thing and one thing only: If she cared that much, she would have put down the drink and driven out to find you herself._

_  
_

_It is December 4 th, 2006, and it’s fucking freezing. When you get home your mother has already fallen asleep. You pour yourself a cup of black coffee and wonder why you even bothered coming home._

_  
_

_\---_

_  
_

_Your name is Rose Lalonde, and you are sick to your stomach of this. You’re already old beyond your years, and you think a lot. Possibly too much, but better than not at all. Over the years, your thoughts have ranged from ‘I will never drink in front of my children.’ To ‘I will never drink in front of anyone, let alone my children’ to finally come to the conclusion that you don’t even want children at all because it occurs to you very suddenly that you would have no idea how to properly raise them having such a shambolic childhood yourself._

_  
_

_You sit alone in your bedroom. You have already argued with her once today about cleaning the house, but you can still hear the gentle mumble of the vacuum when you cover your ears. She’s got this weird fixation with cleanliness and you think she’s doing it for you, which only adds insult to injury. Your computer is flashing but you really don’t want to know who or why. You’re feeling a little sorry for yourself, and you’ve got good reason. You almost forget about the box you picked up from the post office earlier that day until a couple of hours later when you trip over it. Curiosity overthrows your martyrdom and you allow yourself to have a peep inside._

_  
_

_It’s a gift from your friend John – a knitting set. You instantly forget your self-pity and begin to laugh raucously to yourself at how utterly silly it is as a gift. You get a little carried away and tears begin to spill down your cheeks. You have no idea why the gift is so funny, but it is. You’ve wanted a scarf for so long and it looks like you were finally going to get it! The idea tickles you immensely but at the same time your chest feels warm and good in a way that you’re pretty sure you’ve never felt before._

_  
_

_Of course, you don’t tell him this. After all, you have a reputation to uphold._

_But still, you’re pretty damn touched._

_It is December 4 th, 2007, and you think this might be the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you on your birthday._

_Screw that, you know it is, and it's about fucking time._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was very difficult to write for personal reasons, I have updated the tags and I'd appreciate to know whether or not they are appropriate for this kind of thing. I like writing Rose, more of her next.


	8. Earth, Present

If she closed her eyes when things were quiet, even on the days when the sky rained more than it used to when she was younger, she and Dave were gridlocked in some juvenile argument about something that didn’t matter and the other girls at school were being particularly obvious about their sentiments towards her, she could still remember their smiles; two perfect, glowing, and most importantly _genuine_ grins that would make any self-respecting dentist’s toes curl in horror but made her heart warm quite unlike anything else. Sometimes the warmth was _almost_ enough to allow her mind to forget that actually they lived in her presence no longer. Other times it didn’t even come close.

 

Unfortunately, today was one of those days.

 

“You could always tell me what’s wrong instead of sitting there moping, y’know.”

She shook her head as he tried to place a plate of some kind of food in front of her which, upon closer inspection, was plain wholemeal toast. He ignored her and sat himself down opposite, pointing to it. Another morning routine, his this time. Though it was exhausting going through the same futile battles every day, she had to commend him on his perseverance. Dave Strider could be an absolute piece of shit to live with, but in his defence he never gave up on people. Originally, she had considered it a weakness in his character (One of many she’d noticed whilst living in close proximity to him), but as time had passed and she had begun to notice the flaws in herself too, she realised begrudgingly that he was thus far probably the only human being who had shown such dedication to her wellbeing, and if she was honest she was more grateful for it than she was willing to admit.

 

“I don’t want to.” It wasn’t clear which of his two demands she was referring to. It didn’t really matter, seeing as both had the same answer. “I have coffee, that’s fine. That’s enough.”

“You can’t survive on coffee alone, Lalonde.”

“I’m doing a pretty good job so far.”

 

She fired him a smirk before raising her mug to her lips as a kind of victory gesture. The words were on a shared internal script for both of them to recite with ease each new day. She thinks that one day he will get bored of the game and stop. In reality, he will stop when and _only_ when Rose decides to eat something of her own accord.

 

The next part was also painfully well-rehearsed. Rose watched as her brother leant across the table and trapped one of her bony wrists in the space between his thumb and index finger, closing the gap and moving it up and down her arm to illustrate his point. She noticed the ease with which he was beginning to be able to move it, but she did not notice the tired glaze his eyes had adopted. Slowly he cut the piece in two and offered one half to her, taking the other for himself. “Truce?”

She took the piece in silence and bit into it, hating the crumbly, dry feeling on her tongue but swallowing all the same. His eyes stayed firmly fixed on her as he ate his own half, matching her pace. Neither wanted to finish first and they ate in silence, both remembering with some twinge of guilt towards the other that there was once a time when it would be some kind of crazy fruit salad or ridiculously huge cake for breakfast. Food had become a necessity to live that was too difficult to think about without a flood of memories to be something either of them enjoyed.

As she finished, she was surprised to see the beginning of a diversion to their ritual in the form of him still being at the table, chin resting on the backs of hands.

 

“Elbows off the table, Strider.” It was offered as a joke, but his mouth didn’t move to laugh or smile. He stayed opposite her, watching her in a way that made her uncomfortable. It took her a moment to realise why, but it was startlingly obvious once she figured it out:

 

Behind his shades, he was looking at her body.

He was surveying it the way one might analyse a new car or a horse in a race, taking in the details of her physique to an alarming degree. Several snide comments about incestuous perversion flitted across her mind in quick succession, but all were silenced by the unchanging look on his face. After a silence that was more than a little longer than comfortable he uttered his reply, barely a whisper yet it seemed to echo inside her head like every bad thought she’d ever had for a while after it was spoken.

 

“You’re getting awful small, Rose.”

She looked across to him and properly took in the pained expression on his perfect face, his mouth still open a little from the last syllable of her name. She took in the frail look of his own limbs, the way his collarbones protruded a little too strongly beneath his thin t-shirt. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she shrugged apologetically.

 

“It takes one to know one.” ‘ _And it’s going to take more than observations to change it,’_ She thought to herself.

 

 “I don’t want to go to school today.”

“Me neither.”

“Cool. I’ll phone us in sick.”

 

Before she might have reprimanded him for lying but she was beginning to wonder if it was a lie this time at all.

 

\---

 

The day passed quickly. They’d done their own things, but together. It seemed that slowly they were learning to coexist not merely peacefully but half-happily as well. It had taken them long enough.

 

She tangled her fingers in her brother’s hair and allowed herself to smile a little as he bumped his head into her hand. Eyes closed, it was easy to forget the morning had even happened. The dim evening light filtered through his bedroom window and gave everything a pale orange tint, accentuating his subtle freckles and bringing out the highlights in his hair. At this angle she could not see the shadows beneath his cheekbones and in this light she could not see the dark circles beneath his eyes, but it was more than that. His face was peaceful, gentle. With his brow unfrowned and his eyelids merely resting over his irises rather than being squeezed too tightly shut she could imagine that he was sixteen and excited to live again, and it gave her a much needed sense of reassurance.

“I’m not going back,” He mumbled, breaking their quiet-time. It was obvious what he meant, but she made no move to try to persuade him otherwise. Her hand hovered above his hair for a moment before falling back to the blanket beneath them.

“Rose? Did you hear me? I’m not going back.”

“I heard,” She sighed.

“And?”

“It’s your life, Dave, not mine.”

“What about you?”

“I will go back.” ‘ _I will do what I’m supposed to do, like I always have and always will.’_ She thought, but did not say because deep down she had known this was coming. He didn’t like school and he didn’t like the people there. His weekend work in clubs and bars had been getting progressively more in-demand and she knew he wouldn’t stay in a place he didn’t like any longer than he had to.

 

And she was jealous. Incredibly jealous.

She did not want to return without her brother. Dave quietly disliked the situation there. Rose quietly feared it.

 

“I’ll still be here most mornings and nights-“  
“I know.”

His eyes flicked open at the bitter undertone in her voice that she had failed to conceal convincingly.

“Rose?”

“You needn’t justify it, it’s fine.”

Stroking his head once more she smiled fondly down at him, quick to try and eliminate the signs of worry on his face that were again becoming prominent. “It’s what’s best for you. Don’t worry about me, I can look after myself.”

“But-“

“Go to sleep, Dave.”

 

For once he did as he was told, the pink glow of the sun setting radiating on his cheeks as she watched the room slowly fill with familiar tendrils of black and grey.

 

 

_Your name is Rose Lalonde, and this is situation critical. You are living your life under the naïve presumption that someone perfectly capable of being independent needs your help to survive more than you need theirs and it seems to be working a little too well._

 

_For how long can you continue to pretend things are fine?_


End file.
